Atlas Crate is the newest subscription box from parent company KiwiCo. This box is designed to spark the curiosity and sense of adventure in children ages 6-11 and help them become citizens of the world. Each month they will deliver materials and instructions to provide hands-on experiences to help them develop their sense of cultural awareness.
KiwiCo offers boxes for different age groups: Cricket Crate is for 24-36-month-olds, Koala Crate is for 3-4-year-olds, Kiwi Crate is for 5-8-year-olds, and Doodle Crate, Tinker Crate for 9-16+-year-olds, and Atlas Crate for 6-11-year-olds. There really is something for every age with this company.
This review is of the $19.95 a month Atlas Crate box, for 6-11-year-olds.
This box was sent to us at no cost for review. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes).
About Atlas Crate
The Subscription Box: Atlas Crate
The Cost: $19.95 per month + free shipping
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Save 60% off your first month! No coupon required, just use this link
The Products: Crafts and DIY projects for kids, with supplemental learning kits, booklets, and activities. Crates are filled with materials and inspiration to encourage creativity and curiosity about the world.
Ships to: U.S. for free, Canada for $6.95 per month
Atlas Crate December 2018 Review
The country we explored this month was Sweden and we received this envelope full of information. I love the greeting in another language and the detail of the string closure on the back, it makes it just a smidge more exciting being able to physically open this!
This envelope unfolded to show us a contents list and several pages to add to our Adventure Book. Everything in this box is incredibly organized and nicely packaged making it easy to locate it all!
We received this Adventure Book in our first box and this month they gave us a Sweden sticker to add to the front of it. The rings of the book open up so that we can add more pages as we receive them.
Our first box was based on the World and contained cards for each of the continents. This time we were able to locate the continent in our book and add our pages behind it.
These cards are bright and vibrant and full of tons of information about Sweden on each side. I especially enjoy the fun facts page since we always learn something new!
They also included some unique activities like making a mini ice hotel, building a longship, and making Appelpaj which sounds delicious!
The first activity in our box was a game called Kubb. I love when they include games like this. It's such a fun way to get a sense of culture from the country we are learning about. This looks like its a mini version of the game, but there are actual Kubb World Championships held every year on the Swedish island of Gotland.
The directions include a nice section on what pieces we get for this game as well as detailed instructions on how to set it up. The first step was to put together our King piece using the red crown stickers and the small cube to create the top.
I used the included foam stickers to stick the crown piece on top of the block piece and our King was done.
Then I set up my playing field using a tape measure and masking tape. It recommended creating it on the floor, but I chose to stick to the tabletop since the baby has just started crawling and is getting pretty fast!
The pieces of tape had to be 15 inches apart and then the King went right in the center. The colored kubb pieces got lined up on the outside lines in 4-inch increments.
Next, the first player throws all four of their batons and tries to knock down their opponent's kubbs while making sure to not knock down the king. I was only able to knock down one kubb on my first try- it was much harder than it looks!
So this is where it gets interesting; your opponent has to pick up the kubb you knocked down and toss it onto your side of the "field" carefully so that they don't knock anything over. Wherever it lands, it then becomes a field kubb and is stood upright. Now when your opponent throws the batons, they first have to knock down the field kubb before they can attempt to knock down your kubbs. The game continues on in this manner with each person taking turns. The object is to first knock down the field kubbs, then the back line of kubbs and then you can knock down the king. If at any time you knock down the king and you haven't knocked down all of the kubbs first, your opponent immediately wins. I love that the games they include are all on a smaller scale and fairly easy to play. We usually end up using them as silly pre or post-dinner entertainment!
The next activity in our box was to make our own Tomtes. In Swedish folklore, these are magical gnomes that protect and care for your home and on Christmas, you leave them a bowl of julegret (Christmas porridge) to thank them for their help all year. I thought this was a cute way to learn about a fun aspect of Swedish culture!
First up was to make our hats. The directions were very easy to follow and had colorful pictures to help us. We decorated our felt hat pieces with the stickers and then I tied on the shorter piece of yarn we received to the bottom hole of each hat.
We laced up our hats and then I secured the top of the yarn and cut off the plastic end and our hats were complete.
The next step was to use the roving, which my four-year-old likened to a cat's fluffy tail, and I twisted a small pipe cleaner around the center.
Then I slid the ends of the pipe cleaners into the two up and down holes on our felt body piece and twisted it in the back to secure. I added a yellow bead to a second pipe cleaner and then threaded that into the two holes above the roving on our body and twisted the back of that to secure it as well.
Next, we matched up the holes in our felt arms to the holes on the body piece and slipped a brad through it. We opened the arms of the brad on the back to secure it. The last photo shows how our arms, bead nose, and roving mustache were all secured onto our body piece. So clever and simple!
Next, we took the small gray circle and the long yarn lace that we received and followed the incredibly detailed (and helpful!) instructions to match the holes up and tie on our yarn.
Then, we laced it up similarly to how we had done the hats, but this time as I laced, it started to draw our body piece into a circle, which I thought was such a clever way to simplify this step and make it fool-proof for kids to complete.
Once the base was formed, I continued to lace up the holes on the bottom, stopping halfway to insert some fluff and then finished lacing it up to the top. Our body was done!
We added our hats back on top and we had some super cute Tomtes!
They gave us some little sticks and mitten stickers to add to our Tomte's arms. We just wrapped the mitten stickers around the sticks and they were secure. One Tomte had a flag to hold and they even marked on our flag piece where the stick should go before we added our foam sticker.
The other Tomte was given two craft sticks to add to the bottom to form skis. The felt bottoms already had slits cut into them so it was just a matter of weaving the craft sticks through.
Here are our new magical gnome protectors for our home! They are super cute and the materials are pretty sturdy, which I can always appreciate.
Verdict: What a great Atlas Crate this month! I always enjoy when they include a game in this box because it's a fun piece of culture that will appeal to any kid and it is usually something very unique to us. This month I especially enjoyed the Tomte craft since not only were they adorable, but they also introduced us to a little bit of Swedish mythology. It was a great crafting activity that was so easy to create since they really think ahead and plan each piece to make it as simple as possible. Overall, the activities were fun ways to introduce the kids to Swedish culture and I think it was worth the $19.95 cost of the box plus free shipping.
To Wrap Up:
Can you still get this box if you sign up today? Yes, it is likely since this is a fairly new subscription, but keep this in mind- from Kiwi Co:
Crates are assigned each month based on availability and your crate history - not all subscribers receive the same theme each month.
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Save 60% off your first month! No coupon required, just use this link
Check out all of our KiwiCo reviews and more boxes for ages 5-8 and ages 9-12 in the Kids Subscription Box List!
Keep Track of Your Subscriptions: Add this box to your subscription list or wishlist!
What do you think of Atlas Crate?
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